One of the things we’ve seen over the past couple of decades is an increasing role that genetics can play in cancer predisposition, especially for ovarian and uterine cancer….
One of the hard things about ovarian cancer is, although we’ve made a lot of progress in diagnosing and treating it, we haven’t made as much progress toward a cure as we would all hope. But the potential with identifying families with hereditary dispositions is that now we can help to prevent cancer altogether….
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[O]ne of the most common [misconceptions] is that, if cancer doesn’t run in your family, there’s no way there could be a genetic mutation at risk. We have a lot of studies that are showing that…sometimes as many as two-thirds of women that we identify [with genetic risk] when we just screen everybody…have no family history of cancer that would have raised our suspicion.…
[Another misconception] is that a lot of people tend to be very fatalistic about cancer risk…[T]he whole point about this is that it gives us a chance to be proactive about cancer risks, so we can take steps to screen for cancer and find it at an early stage when it’s much more treatable and curable, to take preventative action.The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion, and analysis. Read full, original post: Genetic Counseling and Testing: The Importance of Knowing Your Risk
